Not Your Mothers Curl Talk Sculpting Gel 6 Ounce Frizz Control

Product Information

Based on these, my overall favorite is the Not Your Mother’s Curl Talk Mousse…which is what I started off with! It gives me big volume, good definition, a good hard cast, and long-lasting results while being curly girl approved.

Unclip hair, rinse all of the conditioner out while my head is upside down, use wide tooth comb to align hairs, scrunch hair a few times to squeeze some water out. Then I would plop my hair with a hair towel for about 10-15 minutes, take the shirt off my head, microplop to get more water out and then add the mousse. My routine was to shampoo just my scalp, scrunch and pulse while shampoo is in my hair. Rinse. Add conditioner to the lower 3/4 of my strands, scrunch and pulse. Use a wide tooth comb to comb through my hair, then clip all of my hair on top of my head while I shave. The only downside of this product for me is it is not curly girl approved. It has two silicones. However, in my opinion they are more acceptable silicones than some others. One is dimethicone which is a water soluble silicone so it won’t build up as badly as some other silicones.This is the only part of this blog post that relies on gathering data from others vs my own testing. “Most popular” requires getting information from other people with wavy hair. So, I put out a poll asking people with wavy hair what their favorite mousse was. Overall, I didn’t find this to be a very good performing mousse for me. I wonder if this works better on other hair types. Perhaps for those who don’t need a hard hold it works better, or for those who are prone to stringy hair? But, if it is recommended due to the low price, I’d recommend trying Aussie instant freeze mousse as it performed much better and for only about .60 more than this costs. Below you’ll see that I also had better results from another Herbel Essences mousse that is the exact same price at my store. Something I noticed about this product is it felt a bit heavy or product-y, despite not weighing me down. Also, the can for this mousse is a bit smaller than most others making it a slightly worse value.

Marketing does not do a very good job of letting you know what you’ll really get from a mousse, in my opinion. For example “level 3 hold” doesn’t mean much if you have never used that brand before. I thought a detailed mousse comparison could be really helpful. I don’t even remember why, but one day I decided to try mousse. I noticed that I had better root volume and my hair dried faster. I have very dense hair and was used to diffusing for over an hour. Cutting over 20 minutes off my diffusing time felt like a huge benefit. Herbal Essences Body Envy. I see the Herbal Essences Totally Twisted mousse recommended a lot, but after finding that it didn’t have enough hold for me, I decided to try this Body Envy line. It’s rated as having a 4 hold, while the totally twisted is rated 3. This mousse is the same price as the totally twisted, and is curly girl approved.However, my results when dry were not weighed down. I felt that this mousse controlled my frizz best out of the mousses that I tested. My volume and definition both started out well, but my one side fell flat pretty early on. It also felt a bit heavy or product-y. I suspect that if you used this mouse and didn’t microplop, it would be a good mousse for very low-frizz, really defined waves. Those aren’t my top hair goals, but if they are yours, I’d give this one a try. Because this mousse offers so much of what I want in a product, and because the silicones are not the worst of the worst, I’ll be repurchasing this product. This is my second favorite mousse from the group I tested. Even refreshing 2 days in a row with more mousse, my hair doesn’t feel “producty”. Prior to trying this mousse I had always strived for a mousse that would last without needing to refresh. This is one where I don’t mind using it to refresh. This mousse does have a strong scent (lemon) that I don’t care for but it fades after my hair dries. Overall this is my favorite mousse because it gives me big volume, good definition, and it lets me hair look good the longest. In terms of my style preferences, I prioritize volume over definition though definition matters to me as well. I am not someone who is too fixated on frizz. My main goals with mousse are hard hold, big volume, at least decent definition, and long-lasting results. Oh, and I prefer curly girl approved products but it’s not an absolute must.

I have dense, medium to coarse, mixed porosity hair. Low porosity roots, average porosity upper strands, and high porosity lower strands. My hair does not support itself well, I need a good cast and strong hold to maintain definition for multiple days. My hair is not very prone to getting “stringy”. Cake Mousse. This mousse was compared several months later which is why my hair is shorter. I also DID refresh my hair each day in this, where I did NOT refresh my hair with the other mousses. This mousse does not hold up well without refreshing. However, it is a very light mousse that feels like it totally disappears into my hair, so I don’t mind adding more mousse on day 2 and day 3 to refresh. If you’re someone who doesn’t need or want a hard hold but likes volume, and are okay with refreshing your hair a lot or washing frequently, this might be a good one to try.

Comparing mousses for wavy hair

I did two polls, I put one in the Wavy Girl Method Facebook group, and one in the /r/wavyhair subreddit. I asked people on reddit to not do the poll if they happened to also be in the Facebook group, to avoid the risk of repeated answers. I’d say my hair gets weighed down about “average” compared to others with wavy hair. I am not extremely easily weighed down, but it happens with oily products. My hair does not look or feel greasy particularly easily. My hair takes forever to dry, over 6 hours to air dry without any products in it! The 2nd photo was the morning after washing (less than 24 hours) yet it had already dramatically lost its shape. It did have some waves to it, but the frizziness and general disheveled feeling made me not want to wear it even on day 2, making it the shortest lasting of the mousses I tried. I could really feel the product in my hair the whole time, too. This was my least-favorite mousse of them all, unfortunately. To try to ensure that my results weren’t based on my routine, I used the same hair routine as closely as possible each time I tested a mousse.

What you consider to be the best mousse will depend somewhat on what you like from a mousse. The chart below shares the cast, definition, volume, frizz control, and drying time properties of each of 10 mousses. I also took note of how long my hair took to dry when using these products, and whether or not they are curly girl approved products. Instead of just sharing my favorites, I took note of a variety of properties so that you can decide what might be best for you based on what you prefer in a mousse. Best Mousse For Wavy Hair ProductIf I didn’t get a cast the first time that I used the product, or didn’t get a cast over my whole head, I tested that mousse a second time and made adjustments to try to get better results. If I got results that felt like I used too much product, I would try again using less. So, some of these were tested multiple times but others worked well on the first try and then I only tested them once. I did NO refreshing at all. Typically I would refresh when I start to lose definition. However, I specifically wanted to test how long these would all last without needing to refresh because I find it’s far easier to just get good hold from your wash day products vs having to refresh every single day. Also, it seems to be easier to get good refresh results if the hair is still in decent shape before refreshing. I spent the first two years of the curly girl method using gel. The first gel I ever tried was LA Looks gel. It worked well and it’s super affordable. I just didn’t see a reason to try anything else for quite a while. Pantene pro-v curl mousse. This mousse has a consistency similar to shaving cream. It has a mild, sweet smell. I used 3 handfuls of this product which is less than I need of most mousses. I had to microplop a bit more than usual after applying the mousse, as my hair really fell a lot just from adding the mousse.